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Contents 1 Buying / Shopping / Consumer 1.1 Shopping for old stuff: How to identify a fair deal 1.2 Buying again something you already have because you can't find the first one 2 How do I know what to believe?? 3 People / behavior problems 3.1 People ask for what they think would solve their problem rather than stating their problem, what they're really trying to do, etc. 4 Social / awkwardness / etiquette problems 4.1 Restaurant eating: Who pays? 5 Social / human nature/behavior problems 5.1 Popularity perpetuation 5.1.1 Case study: In context of [search engines (category)] 5.1.2 Languages 6 Problems in our society 6.1 — Tyler (2006-04-26) 7 If you ride your bike to the store to get groceries, it can be difficult or impossible to haul everything back 8 Keeping in touch with people 8.1 It's hard to keep in touch with everyone you care about. How can it be done? Should it be attempted? 8.2 They move and change their contact info (mailing address, e-mail address, phone number etc.) 9 How can I get UPS/Fedex to deliver without a signature for "signature required in person" deliveries? 10 Table metadata 10.1 Relationships 10.2 Columns 11 Article metadata

[edit] Buying / Shopping / Consumer

[edit] Shopping for old stuff: How to identify a fair deal

Okay, supposing that I had the goal of buying most things used after the product has been around at least 1 year. For example, I want to acquire a PDA: but not a top-of-the-line one: rather, one that was top-of-the-line a year ago or more. The prices should have come down on that item tremendously since then.

Question: How do I identify how long a product has been on the market? Is there somewhere that tracks such things? Or would I have to say, have identified the product I want in 2006 and then wait until 2007 to buy it?

The other problem is that there are just so many models of PDAs that I don't even know which one is better or even which one was newer. How do I keep from buying a really-old junky model when I meant to buy a top-of-the-line-just-1-year-ago model?

I guess a couple ideas come to mind:

• do a lot of research
• find reviews of these products, and look at the date the review was written
• look for a larger model number?
• identify the features I want/need and go only based on that: the features should be increasing with newer models rather than decreasing! (Even if it's in less noticeable ways such as bigger screen, more colors, lighter, smaller, longer battery life...)

[edit] Buying again something you already have because you can't find the first one

This is the trouble with having too much stuff or not organizing it so you're able to find stuff when you need it.

I think that taking an inventory of all my stuff might prevent this from happening; I still don't know if it will be worth it, but I'm going to give it a try.

[edit] How do I know what to believe??

I think some software could be written or used to help one sort through the various viewpoints on a subject and decide which one or ones are believable and which are not; what assumptions each is based on (do you agree with those assumptions? explicitly state what is implicitly assumed); is there evidence to support this?; is it reliable? verifiable? ...

[edit] People / behavior problems

[edit] People ask for what they think would solve their problem rather than stating their problem, what they're really trying to do, etc.

http://wooledge.org/mywiki/XyProblem has a very interesting rant about this

[edit] Social / awkwardness / etiquette problems

[edit] Restaurant eating: Who pays?

Part of the problem is that the waiter usually assumes that one person will pay for everyone in the party, rather than assuming that each individual will pay his/her own way.

And that problem may stem from the problem that it's a bit of a pain for them to have to "split the check" and it wastes time to have to handle all those transactions individually.

Problem of timing/assumption: Unless you tell them before they bring the check, they may bring one big check by default.

Awkward moment: Unless it was understood ahead of time that one person will pay for the group, that could be awkward.

Possible resolutions:

• a hero emerges who pays for everyone
• they ask the waiter to please split the check actually
• one person pays but everyone pays that person back (with cash or with an IOU)

So should people just be more generous and pay for their friends'/coworkers'/etc.'s meals when they go out to eat together? Or should everyone insist on paying their own way and hopefully eventually change the assumptions of the waiters so that they assume that the check will be split unless told otherwise.

[edit] Social / human nature/behavior problems

[edit] Popularity perpetuation

[edit] Problems in our society

How can I effect positive change in society?

[edit] — Tyler (2006-04-26)

• the health-care system
• the political party system
• the media
• the food industry

[edit] If you ride your bike to the store to get groceries, it can be difficult or impossible to haul everything back

[Weird ideas (category)][Biking (category)]

(Why would I want to ride my bike to the store? For exercise and for fun... And to save time, by taking care of two birds with one trip...)

I can't really think of a solution to this that I like. (A car-sharing program? That would probably be ridiculously impractical.)

I guess I'll just have to only pick up as many groceries as I can safely carry home on my bike... Or drive my car if I plan on getting more stuff than that...

[edit] Keeping in touch with people

[edit] It's hard to keep in touch with everyone you care about. How can it be done? Should it be attempted?

It's mostly difficult due to time constraints and having "higher-priority things to do", I suppose...

...

[edit] They move and change their contact info (mailing address, e-mail address, phone number etc.)

How do you stay up-to-date with their current contact info?

ask friends

social networking sites

if they could only directly update their own records in your linked database...

[edit] How can I get UPS/Fedex to deliver without a signature for "signature required in person" deliveries?

http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/39771 :

"No, Amazon.com, I refuse to believe your entire market consists of unemployed bums."

fcain:

I've made an agreement with the delivery truck driver for each company to drop packages at my front door. I don't really care if someone tries to steal it. In some cases, they required a letter from me, in other cases they gave me a sticker that that has a bar code on it that they can scan.

I would call up each delivery company and ask them what hoops you've got to jump through to get them to just leave stuff.

andeluria

Most of the time, leaving packages is up to driver discretion. As for getting the driver to actually leave a package, much success has been had with a note indicating a specific tracking number, drop-off location instructions and signature. This provides the driver with the proof they need so they don't get fined if you complain about a missing package- the big reason they don't want to leave stuff behind.

• Deliver to work, if possible
• Leave a note with delivery instructions ("leave it on the porch"). Make it more authentic by adding tracking number, sender's name (company who's sending the package), and your signature.
• Make arrangements with the carrier to always leave packages in a certain place without a signature.

ParcelSafe

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